Abstract

[From the Introduction] For this reason I restrict myself to a discussion of the impact of the third pillar in one particular case: the way member states deal with immigration, asylum-seekers and refugees. In this paper, I will argue that the Europeanization of national immigration policies is not a process in which the member states ttcommunitarizent heir immigration, asylum, and refugee policies. Policy harmonization and decision-making on the European level consist primarily of "negative coordinationIt (Scharpf, 1993): national policies that cancel each other out are abolished and the central policy instruments -- policing -- are made to work more consistently with each other in the newly created framework of intergovernmental negotiations. To discuss this argument, I will first describe how the shifting pattern of immigration in the eighties finally resulted in a clear policy shift: national policies were replaced by intensive intergovernmental cooperation, which was finally institutionalized in the third pillar. In a second step, I will try to explain this cooperation as a process of "negative coordinationn in which the national governments sought to avoid negative external effects for their policies, while simultaneously fending off every demand for a common immigration policy. Finally, I will discuss the fallacies stemming from the reduction of immigration policies to control strategies and policing and the chances for the development of a common European immigration policy.